Former Zulily Employees Announce Digital Ad Platform New Engen

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A group of Seattle entrepreneurs, who worked at flash sale site Zulily before it sold for $2.4 billion in 2015, are announcing a new company that has been developing a technology to help advertisers figure out where to efficiently buy digital ads.

Called New Engen, the company was founded in 2016 by CEO David Atchison and two other former Zulily employees. Atchison was a senior vice president of marketing and analytics at Zulily, which was acquired by retailer QVC in a deal valued at about $2.4 billion in cash and stock.

Despite today’s launch, New Engen hasn’t necessarily been a secret. The company has raised about $10.5 million in venture funding in 2016 and 2017, which GeekWire reported at the time. The funding came from Trinity Ventures and August Capital, and New Engen has been operating in beta up until this launch, Atchison said in an e-mail.

In that time, the company appears to have had some success finding customers: It says 1-800-Flowers, The Hershey Company, Tumi, Timbuk2, FanDuel, and Universal Music Group are among the users of its software. The company now has 125 employees at its Seattle headquarters, in New York, San Francisco, Dallas, and Charlotte.

New Engine’s products help customers create, test, and optimize content, as well as figure out which digital channels to sell it on, the company said in a news release. It has artificial intelligence capabilities, the company says, which can help users determine when and where to advertise, such as Facebook, Google, Instagram, and others—if not all of them.

David Holley is Xconomy's national correspondent based in Austin, TX. You can reach him at dholley@xconomy.com Follow @xconholley